


Just Dance, It'll Be Okay

by ImogenSmiley



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: 52 Week Oneshot Challenge, Arcade Dancing, Ballet, Canon Ballet Dancer, Canon Ballet Dancer Eli, Canon Competitive Nature, Canon Compliant, Competition, Competitive-ness, DDR, Dance Dance Revolution - Freeform, Dancing, F/F, Flirting, Flirty Dancing, Getting to know you, Oneshot, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, arcade games, dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26120869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImogenSmiley/pseuds/ImogenSmiley
Summary: In childhood Nozomi loved to dance, no matter where her parents upped and moved to, she would find an arcade with DDR. She loved clawing her way onto leader boards. She even had her own home dance mat. She wanted to be a dancer.Eli Ayase was expected to be on pointe on command, prim, proper, poised. She was training in classical dance from the age of four and competed from the moment she turned five. She was one of the smallest dancers in the troupe, used as a prop for flying and tricks, but she didn’t care as long as she got to wear her sparkly costumes and her hair in the neat bun with rosettes. However, as she grew older, she wasn’t lucky enough to keep up with the other girls. The girls who weren’t healthy in their pursuit of the prima stage, thirteen-year-old chain-smokers, and girls that had developed maladaptive habits.Eli hated being made to move to Japan. Until she realised there was a new type of dancefloor she could find her feet on.
Relationships: Ayase Eli & Toujou Nozomi, Ayase Eli/Toujou Nozomi
Kudos: 16





	Just Dance, It'll Be Okay

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow, I'm still managing to keep this up. I swear, at this rate, the only reason I know what day of the week it is is because of this challenge. Welcome to Week Thirty-Five of the 2020 52 Week Oneshot Challenge, this time I've been writing about dance!

When Nozomi Tojo called out to Eli Ayase on the stairs, she had no idea that she was about to start the most beautiful journey of her life. However, what she did know, was she had a chance to make a friend with someone so interesting.

After the first week of them spending time at school together, she suggested that they go out after clean up duty and do something. Eli had, albeit reluctantly, agreed to go along with her. So together, they stepped out of the school gates and followed the steep staircase toward the town centre. High-rise chain restaurants sat.

They passed the standard places to go, watching their classmates flood into WcDonald’s and the ice cream parlour. The girls of Otonokizaka tended to blow their lunch money after school. It was hard not too when the nearest general store was half a mile away but WcDonald’s was just down the stairs.

Regardless of the smell of fast foods mocking her nose, Nozomi carried on. She was chatting idly to Eli, asking her questions about Russia, her life before she moved to Japan. They spoke with caution, dancing around eggshells as they learned how to get equal footing with each other. It was always hard with strangers. Neither were the best at being sociable.

Nozomi walked ahead, leading her new-found friend toward the neon sign that read “amusements”. Inside, were towering games with strobing lights, ones Eli had never seen before. Seeing the blonde girl’s blue eyes widen, surrounded by games, made her friend’s heart swell.

Tentatively, Eli wandered around the arcade, Nozomi following her as Eli chose some games she would like to play. They started with a zombie shooting game, but fled from it after the first kill, the gore making them uneasy. They then quickly shifted their attention to air hockey, a much more relaxed game. Or, at least at a glance. The two high school girls played for over ten minutes, their desperation to win rising above their need to make a good impression. It was nice; nice to happen upon someone on such a similar wavelength. Nozomi didn’t understand how she had been so lucky. She barely managed to claw victory from Eli’s hands, but as the winner, she declared she ought to choose the next game.

Eli conceded, and let the violet haired girl march her to the far corner of the arcade, where a boy from the neighbouring school played DDR. Nozomi nodded to the empty dance spaces on the adjacent machine. Eli glanced from the machine to the boy beside her and nodded.

One thing she had been reluctant to talk about was her experience dancing, but Nozomi would have to learn that she was good at it at some point, right? Especially if she got her way and got to sign up for a local troupe while at school.

Nozomi loaded up the console beside her and shrugged off her blazer, draping it over the back of the railings that backed the game. Eli, beside her, had rolled up her shirt sleeves, and pulled her socks down to her ankles.

“Are you ready?” Nozomi asked.

Eli nodded, letting her companion choose a song.

Eventually, after a few moments of indecisive flickering, Nozomi stomped her right foot on the centre sensor on her dance-mat, confirming her selection. It was an old classic j-pop song that she had been obsessed with as a child. She rarely played it on DDR but according to the difficulty rating it required both high stamina and medium difficulty levels. A perfect song for them to start off with.

Bright screens jolted to life, an image of a dancer from the nineties, equipped with saggy red tracksuit bottoms and a white vest top, sunglasses and a lopsided cap, strode on. He leapt up and down three times before the dance begun.

To the girls’ alarm, their partner was a surprisingly even match. Their breaths were shallow, but neither girl was backing down, hurtling all of their energy at the dance mat, stomping school shoes onto the sensors, barely glancing at their companions. Instead, the two high schoolers slipped into a league of their own, where it was almost as if they were dancing before a mirror. They felt like they could see themselves on the screen next to the poorly dressed avatar, in equally as gaudy and outdated attire.

Their scores were similar, so close that the defeated Nozomi begged for a rematch. Her glistening emerald eyes were hard to resist. Eli’s heart had swelled, blush staining her cheeks as she agreed, reaching into her breast pocket and producing a petite powder blue coin purse, shoving a few coins inside the slot.

Eli had the chance to choose the song next, she opted for an upbeat song with high stamina and medium dance difficulty, just like her classmate had. She glanced over at Nozomi’s unreadable expression as she listened to the sample chords of a few songs, before selecting a contemporary artists’s cover of a song from a few decades ago.

Like the previous avatar, the dancer the girls were meant to be copying was dressed in ridiculous clothes, neon blue, wide-frame nerdy glasses sat on her nose, dark hair teased, jutting oy to one side. She wore a sparkly tshirt and a short neon skirt, legwarmers and high heeled shoes. She looked like a 1980s dressing up costume.

But the song, the song was hard. The tempo was hard for Eli to keep up with, and despite her having chosen the song, any attempt to beat Nozomi once the song got to the bridge was futile. And, although she had accepted her fate, Eli Ayase would not go down easily.

Nozomi watched the blonde girl pout, crossing her arms when she lost, and she couldn’t help but blush. Eli was like a petulant child when she failed to succeed and it was endearing, like she needed to be soothed, encouraged. But also baited, riled up and motivated.

Nozomi raised her fine violet brows and leered toward Eli. Both girls blushed at the proximity between them

“Best two out of three?” they said in unison.

They called a stranger over to choose their supposedly final song. It was the boy from the other machine. He eyed the girls and chose a top stamina and top difficulty song for the girls to dance to. Eli benefitted from his choice, honing the skills she gained from her dance training, managing to do the moves in dance training. Instead of watching the arrows like Nozomi, she watched the dancer like she would do in the studio, and simply copied everything that he did on-screen.

She thrashed Nozomi, who, gasping for air, bent over double, grinned up at her.

“Best three out of five.”

Eli looked down at her, a smirk creeping onto her lips, “You’re on. But I’d better warn you, I trained with the Russian Junior Ballet.”

“Pshhht.”

“No, I’m serious.”

“No way! That means I really need to beat you so I can wipe your nose in it!”

“You’re so, so, so on!”

For that evening, Eli didn’t feel alone anymore. There was someone at her side, someone with the same fire in her belly that she had, someone who was an even match and was on a similar wavelength. The goose-bumps and adrenaline that coursed through her every time her bright blue eyes met hers felt like she was being set ablaze.

In a night of dancing in the arcade, both girls had gained more than several thousand prize tickets. They gained a fleet of butterflies, nesting in their stomachs, crushes brewing beneath their smiles. They’d fallen, fast and hard, with top stamina and skill. They didn’t want this moment to end.

So, they played DDR until the arcade closed.


End file.
